Challenge for Iowa, I mean.

Romney, I mean.

So far, he appears to have been discreetly pulling a McCain, i.e., skipping the Iowa caucuses. Discreetly because he’s still putting resources and staff into Iowa, but just a fraction of what invested in Hawkeye state four years ago.

Like McCain, he says New Hampshire as being where he can really shine and as acting as his electoral firewall.

But he’s looking at a couple of issues.

On the defensive side, the ‘anyone but Romney’ vote just isn’t going away. In a multi-candidate race, Romney’s consistently been hanging around 20%. But that’s been more or less enough so far, so his staff aren’t panicking. But they’ve also got to be thinking that his New Hampshire firewall could start looking a lot more flammable if someone not Romney grabbed real momentum coming out of Iowa. Even a narrower than expected victory in New Hampshire could see his might fortress turn into a collapsing house of cards.

On the offensive side, they’re thinking, ‘we don’t really want to drag this out.’ Iowa could be a chance to finish this. I suspect that Romney’s campaign has the best organizational structure of any GOP candidate. He won’t win Iowa based on love, affection, nor on any real desire to see him be president. But he might win based on tactics and organizational discipline. And if he does, he probably has things wrapped up. If he loses Iowa, but wins New Hampshire handily, things are probably still pretty well in hand for the Romney campaign, but they’ll still have to spend precious television dollars in places like Florida. Money they could stash away with a double whammy in Iowa and New Hampshire.

I don’t pretend to know which way they’ll go, but I can guarantee they are wondering whether to continue ceding Iowa, bar a token effort.